


Groundhog Day

by Epzilon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bad Ending, Cults, Death, Dystopia, Human Sacrifice, Monsters, Mutation, Nuclear Winter, Post-Nuclear War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29160018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epzilon/pseuds/Epzilon
Summary: A look at how Groundhog Day may be celebrated in the future.
Kudos: 1





	Groundhog Day

Wind whistled across the wasteland, carrying alien howls and screams of pain along its barren trail. Who knew from where the sounds originated; one could only hope it wasn’t near. The scorched-earth soil stretched for what seemed like eternity. Littered here and there were the remains of what once might have been a city, but was now little more than dust and stone. Bones, grotesquely twisted and stretched far beyond a normal shape, laid sticking from the ground, and odd growths resembling plants would move towards them every once and a while, covering them in a search for remaining meat to consume before moving on.

The air wasn’t stale as much as buzzing. Buzzing with the remnants of radiation from a war long past finished. A war fought in the interests of only the uppest of the upper-class. Not for the people it had laid to rest, nor the ones still wandering the dulled deserts of despair where a nation of bold red, white, and blue had once been. No. A war fought for greed, pride, and the self-interests of those with the power to protect them but the cowardice to not do so themselves. 

But that was ancient history to the survivors of today. A population cut to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its former glory no longer cared about the past. Nor did they care about the future. All they cared about now was the present. Today (and living through it) the only things left in their minds.

And so, as they had every year, the sandflies came.

The sandflies lived in the North, in what was once known as Lake Erie. Eerie it still was, but no longer a lake. The first round of blasts had ensured  _ that _ . Now, it was a settlement. A town of rusted houses, bloodsport, and one of the last remaining religions in the known world. Hard to believe in a god when a hurricane of nukes rained down to challenge his power. Little hope remained, besides the hope in the sandflies.

They came South from their settlement with hope in their eyes and blood on their clothes. Clothes colored in as many bright colors as possible. One would think in a land of monstrous mutants that one would need camouflage, but the remaining creatures had long since evolved alternative methods of sight. If their presence was known anyway, why not display it loud and proud?

Masks covered the sandflies’ faces. For some, it was to cover up their disfigurement. Melted and mottled skin was common with those who were around for the original end. And for the younger ones, scars and missing parts from their losses in the arenas were sources of humiliation. Not all were mangled, however, some had yet to adjust to the toxic, torrid air. They were used to the damp, subterranean air found in the underground communities of the Erie settlement, only coming to the surface to join in the mass pilgrimage.

They had been traveling for nearly four days, but they had arrived. Where once a faux-stump had stood, now was a mound taller than a bus was long. As the sandflies arrived in groups of ten to twenty, they each sat and waited patiently in silence. By the time the ground began to rumble, nearly three hundred sandflies sat in a semi-circle, each staring wide-eyed at the mound of dirt.

The ground continued to shake, but nothing yet happened. A child, no older than ten, whined from the middle of the crowd. He thought no one would hear him over the quake. He thought wrong. 

Every sandfly turned to look at him immediately. Eyes wide with fear, he scrambled to get up and escape, but he made it through only two layers of sandflies before he was caught and brought to the base of the mound.

His captor dragged him, pulled him up the mound to the very top as the child begged and pleaded and apologized, but it was too late. The damage had been done. The man who had brought him up gave a simple push before sliding down the dirt-covered mound, back to the crowd. 

The child tried desperately to stay balanced, waving his arms and legs out around him even as the ground shook. His attempts were in vain as the soil beneath his feet crumbled. Left to the mercy of gravity, the child fell backward, out of sight of the crowd, into the mound, screaming. The screams lasted only a moment before being eclipsed by a thunderous roar like a new god awakening. Finally, it was upon them.

Dirt erupted into the air as a hulking monster climbed from his tomb. The creature was the size of an adult elephant, covered in bulging muscles and short, greasy fur. Its paws could have passed for a human’s hand if you ignored the missing finger and the scoop-like claws that could rival an industrial backhoe. A round, black nose sat between its dozen-or-so beady red eyes and its gaping maw. The creature’s mouth contained only two teeth, both resembling axeheads. A small strip of neon-yellow cloth was stuck between them.

The creature roared once more, but the crowd only moved back quietly. They had been coming here every year for over two decades, and they knew what they were doing. As the creature finally made its way out of its burrow fully, it looked around, eyes wild as they adjusted to the bloody sky.

Finally, after moments of blinking, the creature saw it. For the sandflies, it was what they had been hoping for the past twenty-seven years, what they had dreamed of. A moment of pure bliss in a life of pure agony. For the creature, it was just another day. It didn’t know what it had done or why its prey now bowed to it, laughing giddily with joy and reverence.

For twenty-seven years, spring had always come without fail. With it, it brought new litters of monsters and mutants for survivors to fear. But now, for the first time in twenty-seven years, the first time since humans returned to the surface, the creature had seen his shadow. The nuclear winter would last only six more weeks. The sandflies rejoiced, uncaring that the creature was ripping them to shreds.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They had finally made a decision. Finally. When America had blown itself to smithereens, the rest of the world thought, “That’s that, I guess.” Oh, how wrong they were. The radiation mutated not only the flora, fauna, and survivors of the once-great country, but the viruses and diseases too. Viruses that quickly carried mutagens throughout not only the United States, not only North America, but throughout South America and to nearby islands as well.

And it had all happened within the first five years of fallout. The United Nations had known about the issue, failing to do anything besides completely quarantining the Americas from the world. What else could they do?

Well, now with the advancements they had made, they knew. The bombs would tear apart the two continents atom by atom until nothing was left. Not even a tardigrade could survive a blast like that. It had taken time to get approval to build and use them, but it had finally happened. Finally, after years of suffering, the Americas would be put out of their misery on March sixteenth of this new year.


End file.
